THE GENDERED POLITICS OF EMBRYONIC STEM CELL RESEARCH IN THE USA AND CANADA: AN AMERICAN OVERLAP AND CANADIAN DISCONNECT
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A quick foray into the embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) debate in the USA would suggest that the fate of prenatal life is at its heart, with the controversy being the most recent manifestation of the American pre-occupation with abortion over the last several decades.1 For starters, the issue involves both pro-life and pro-choice groups. It is not difficult to understand the connection between abortion and ESCR for pro-life groups, given the centrality with which prenatal life figures in both contexts. Both entail the destruction of the embryo, and the ESCR also contemplates the intentional creation of embryos solely for research purposes. Pro-life advocates (and others) ask: is it ethical to create or simply use embryos for purposes not therapeutic to the embryo at issue, especially when the embryo is deliberately created and deliberately destroyed for this use? Many pro-life advocates answer in the negative. They view the embryo,2 and its zygote predecessor, as a developing human life from the moment of conception, akin to an ‘unborn child’. Prior to his death, Pope John Paul II declared the moral opposition of the Catholic Church to the use, let alone the creation, of embryos for stem cell research purposes, a view he personally communicated to President Bush.3 American pro-life groups have lobbied the Bush administration to ban ESCR altogether.4 It is important to note, however, that there are individuals who oppose abortion, but support ESCR for its potential therapeutic benefits, and they have also lobbied the Congress in this regard.5 Nevertheless, to the extent that pro-life groups and scholars object to abortion rights that enable the destruction of the embryo, many also object to new genetic technologies that would harm embryos.6 Though not as well-organized, feminist pro-choice groups7 have responded by claiming that anti-abortion advocates are holding human health and scientific advancement hostage to a rigid conservative ideology.8
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.012 | 0.024 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.030 | 0.021 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.009 | 0.009 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".